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Discus in a 40B

4K views 9 replies 5 participants last post by  discuspaul 
#1 ·
Hello,

I am planning on upgrading my 20L soon and was wondering if I would be able to put discus in it? I have heard that they do better in groups, but would a pair be fine instead? What, if any, are the options I could have?

Thanks!
 
#3 ·
If you opt for a proven mated pair, a 20 gal tank is best for spawning (easier for the new born fry to find their parents to feed from), and a 40 gal would be good temporarily to raise a given number of fry as they begin to grow. But be sure that's what you want to do, because growing out fry for resale is a long process requiring a lot of daily work, and a good deal of extra equipment.
A proven mated pair will continually spawn, and you may not like, or want to, cull all the fry each time you got wrigglers, if you didn't care to raise the young.

Otherwise, as j03yYung said, you'd need at least a 55 or 60 gal to keep a group of 5 or 6 discus for compatibility reasons.
Don't consider just 3 or 4 which can be problematic for avoiding potentially serious pecking order aggression issues.
Keeping just one can make for a very lonely camper, as discus are very social fish.
 
#4 ·
Ok cool, that was the kind of information that I was receiving when I was reading threads. So would I be able to keep a proven pair in a planted 40B with CO2 and and other fish like maybe tetras, cories and a couple apistos. I realize that the fry survival rate would not be so good in these conditions, but I think the main goal would be keep discus and maybe every now and then actually raise the fry. Thanks for the information!
 
#5 ·
First off, you should consider the cost of a proven mated pair. A good quality mated pair obtained from a reliable, reputable discus supplier will likely cost you somewhere between $250. and $300., possibly more.
If anyone tells you they have a mated pair, and offers them for less than that, be wary, they will likely not be mated, or there is something wrong with them.

In a community tank, it's unlikely any wrigglers would survive, even after multiple discus spawnings, so you won't likely get to raise any young. The parents may even eat them to prevent other fish from doing so.

Starting off with CO2 is not a good idea for a newcomer to discus. CO2 & discus can be a bad combination for someone who has not kept discus before, and may not be aware of the conditions in which they should be kept.

Do without CO2 for a few months until you become comfortable with discus' traits & behaviors and what water conditions can be problematic for them when using CO2 - do some research beforehand. Large/rapid pH swings with the use of CO2 can be particularly dangerous for the discus.
 
#6 ·
Sure that makes sense. You definitely would not want to accidentally gas the fish. I am still contemplating co2 on the tank. Would dosing excel instead have any ill effects on the fish? Do you keep co2 in your discus tanks? If not than what do you do for plant growth and combatting algae. If you do dose co2 than what reactions do you take to prevent the ph swings?

And on the subject of raising the fry. Assuming that my fish do end up spawning and I choose to try and raise the fry, I think I would plan to raise them outside of the main tank artificially away from the parents. Would a 10 gallon be suffice to raise fry? How big of a size tank would they need to grow out before resale? I am assuming that the size they would need to attain is around quarter size or an inch? And from my research it seems to take around 8 weeks for them to reach this size?

Again my main purpose of getting discus is not to really breed them and the reason I would get a confirmed pair is because that is the proper way to keep them in a 40 gallon. Thanks again for the information, I really appreciate your expertise.
 
#7 · (Edited by Moderator)
I have used CO2 in a discus tank, but only sparingly, with a low bubble count, and kept a careful eye on it.
But with discus, I've found that the best, most successful approach is to keep things as simple as possible.

So in keeping with that, almost all of my discus tanks (over nearly 40 years of keeping discus, on & off) have been low tech, with the occasional use of Excel and liquid or dry macro & micro ferts, but with the emphasis placed mainly on using root tab ferts in pool filter sand to grow the rooted plants. I use fairly low density lighting (discus don't seem to care for high lighting anyway), for limited daily time periods of approx. 7 hrs./day, and with overall plantings being on the light side, so algae has seldom been a problem.

As to raising fry, answering your question is a touch difficult, as it obviously depends so very much on how many fry you have at a given time, and what size they are at various stages in their growth.
You can keep a reasonable amount of fry in a 10 gal tank once they have been weaned from the parents, and are around dime-sized. But if they are well fed multiple daily times, and the tank is bare-bottom, with large daily wcs, they'll grow very quickly, up to an inch per month - so you can imagine how quickly they'll need a 20 gal; then a 40 gal say, soon following that.
8 week old discus can very well be near/around the 2" size, but their growth will likely slow perceptibly when they approach 3". After that the growth might be 3/4" or less per month, for the ensuing 2-4 months.

Most hobbyist discus breeders place their young for sale around the 2" or so size (generally, no larger, and no smaller), which usually takes 8-10 weeks or so. At that stage, their immune systems are still not well developed, and it takes several more months of multiple feedings and large daily wcs to grow them out properly into well-shaped fish that have the potential to reach a decent adult size (around 6" or more). Lots of work - good reason why the price of discus @ 2" doubles or triples in amount when they reach juvenile size of 3" to 4" or so.
Hope this helps inform you.

I'd like to provide a photo of one of my tanks to illustrate the manner in which I set them up and simplify, but all my pics are albumed in photobucket.com, whose web site happens to be down temporarily for maintenance just now, but I'll post a photo a bit later.

Here's the photo I promised:
It's a 75 gal tank with 3"-3.5" juvenile red snake skin discus.

Why am I risking growing out young juvenile discus in a planted tank vs. bare-bottom, you ask ?

1. - Because I have quite a few years' experience raising discus in planted tanks, and I don't neglect doing large, frequent wcs.
2. - I spend a lot of time keeping the tank squeaky clean - so water quality & conditions are pretty much ideal at all times.




 
#8 ·
I have used CO2 in a discus tank, but only sparingly, with a low bubble count, and kept a careful eye on it.
But with discus, I've found that the best, most successful approach is to keep things as simple as possible.

So in keeping with that, almost all of my discus tanks (over nearly 40 years of keeping discus, on & off) have been low tech, with the occasional use of Excel and liquid or dry macro & micro ferts, but with the emphasis placed mainly on using root tab ferts in pool filter sand to grow the rooted plants. I use fairly low density lighting (discus don't seem to care for high lighting anyway), for limited daily time periods of approx. 7 hrs./day, and with overall plantings being on the light side, so algae has seldom been a problem.

As to raising fry, answering your question is a touch difficult, as it obviously depends so very much on how many fry you have at a given time, and what size they are at various stages in their growth.
You can keep a reasonable amount of fry in a 10 gal tank once they have been weaned from the parents, and are around dime-sized. But if they are well fed multiple daily times, and the tank is bare-bottom, with large daily wcs, they'll grow very quickly, up to an inch per month - so you can imagine how quickly they'll need a 20 gal; then a 40 gal say, soon following that.
8 week old discus can very well be near/around the 2" size, but their growth will likely slow perceptibly when they approach 3". After that the growth might be 3/4" or less per month, for the ensuing 2-4 months.

Most hobbyist discus breeders place their young for sale around the 2" or so size (generally, no larger, and no smaller), which usually takes 8-10 weeks or so. At that stage, their immune systems are still not well developed, and it takes several more months of multiple feedings and large daily wcs to grow them out properly into well-shaped fish that have the potential to reach a decent adult size (around 6" or more). Lots of work - good reason why the price of discus @ 2" doubles or triples in amount when they reach juvenile size of 3" to 4" or so.
Hope this helps inform you.

I'd like to provide a photo of one of my tanks to illustrate the manner in which I set them up and simplify, but all my pics are albumed in photobucket.com, whose web site happens to be down temporarily for maintenance just now, but I'll post a photo a bit later.

Here's the photo I promised:
It's a 75 gal tank with 3"-3.5" juvenile red snake skin discus.

Why am I risking growing out young juvenile discus in a planted tank vs. bare-bottom, you ask ?

1. - Because I have quite a few years' experience raising discus in planted tanks, and I don't neglect doing large, frequent wcs.
2. - I spend a lot of time keeping the tank squeaky clean - so water quality & conditions are pretty much ideal at all times.





Beautiful Tank, So what is the minimum size tank for discus fish then? What is optimum? I was under the impression 40B was too small for Discus anyway. I'm sure this would help OP
 
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